Plenty of guides cover choosing a breed and naming your cattery. Far fewer cover the unglamorous truth: a breeding cattery is a record-keeping operation with cats attached. Registrations, health results, litter logs, contracts, payments — done well, they protect your cats, your buyers, and your name. Done poorly, they unravel exactly when it matters: a health dispute, a registry audit, a family asking a question you can't answer.
This is the records foundation we'd give any new breeder, feline or canine — laid out in the order you'll actually need it.
1. Register the cattery and every breeding cat
Register your cattery name with the registry you'll work in — TICA and CFA are the two majors in the U.S. — and keep every breeding cat's registration paperwork in one findable place, not a shoebox. For each cat you'll want, from day one:
- Registration number and registered name (plus the call name everyone actually uses)
- Pedigree, ideally several generations deep, with photos where you can get them
- Titles and show results as they accumulate
The pedigree is not decoration. When you plan pairings, it's the tool that keeps inbreeding coefficients honest — and when buyers ask "are the parents related?", you want an answer backed by a document, not a feeling.
2. Health-test before you breed — and record everything
Every breed has its known risks (HCM in Maine Coons and Ragdolls, PKD in Persians, and so on). Reputable catteries test before breeding and keep the results attached to the cat's record: DNA panels, echocardiograms and their dates, vaccination history, every vet visit. Services like Optimal Selection make feline panels straightforward; OFA maintains registries for cats as well.
Two habits matter more than any single test. Date everything — an HCM echo is a snapshot, not a lifetime clearance, and screening intervals are part of doing it right. And keep results shareable — the breeder who can send a family the actual documents in one message, rather than "she's healthy, trust me," is the breeder who gets referrals.
3. Log every litter like someone will check
For each litter, open a record the day you confirm the pregnancy — not the day kittens go home. Track the pairing, the birth date, and then per kitten: sex, color, daily-then-weekly weights, vaccination and deworming schedule, microchip, and eventually which family each kitten joins. Weights especially — a kitten that stalls on the scale is the earliest warning you'll get, and you only see the stall if yesterday's number is written down.
These litter logs are also your registry paper trail: when it's time to register the litter, everything the form asks for is already in one place.
4. Put every kitten placement in writing
A kitten contract protects three parties — you, the buyer, and the cat. At minimum it should cover: price and deposit terms, spay/neuter expectations for pet-quality kittens, your health guarantee and what it actually promises, and a return-to-breeder clause so no cat of your breeding ever lands in a shelter.
Deposits deserve the same formality: a real invoice with a record of who paid what and when, not a payment app screenshot in a text thread. Pick order on your waitlist should follow deposit date — it's the fairest system and the easiest one to defend. (Our waitlist guide is written with puppies in the examples, but every principle applies unchanged to kittens.)
5. Keep the money records boring
Deposits in, balances at pickup, the occasional refund — a cattery's finances are simple if they're recorded as they happen and miserable to reconstruct in April if they weren't. Keep income attributable by litter and by year. If you're ever asked to show that your cattery is a serious program rather than a hobby gone commercial, clean books are the difference.
The tool question
Everything above can be run on paper and spreadsheets — many good catteries started that way. The failure mode isn't the system, it's the seams: the health result in one folder, the weight log in another notebook, the deposit in a payment app, the contract in someone's email. Every seam is a place where, three years from now, something can't be found.
Kinvara was built to remove the seams — and unlike most breeder software, it isn't a dog product with the labels swapped. Choose cats when you set up your program and the whole platform speaks cattery: cats and kittens, birth dates, TICA and CFA registries on every record. Litters, weights, health documents, waitlists, contracts with e-signature, and invoices all connect to the same records — enter a kitten once and it's on the waitlist, in the buyer's portal, and on the invoice.
A cattery's reputation is built in its records long before it shows in its kittens.
Try Kinvara free for 30 days — no credit card required, and if you already have records in a spreadsheet, we'll import them for you, free.